Hoya Staff Writer Friday, August 25, 2006 Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya Mariam Asmar (SFS ’08) planned to study abroad in Israel this semester, but the university cancelled her trip.

Mariam Asmar (SFS ’08) is supposed to be in Jerusalem right now, living with her relatives and taking classes at Hebrew University. She had been planning the trip since last October. But on Aug. 1, three days before she was set to leave, she got a call from the Office of International Programs informing her she would not be allowed to study in Jerusalem because of the violence that had erupted between Israel and Hezbollah some three weeks earlier. “The minute she started talking . I just knew,” Asmar said. “I just started crying hysterically.” Now, instead of settling into Jerusalem, Asmar is scrambling around Washington, D.C., searching for a last-minute substitute for the next four months of her life. She was going to live with her father’s family half a mile from Hebrew; now she needs an apartment off campus. She had an internship lined up in Jerusalem; now she needs to find a job in D.C. that will waive its deadline. At Hebrew, classes began on Aug. 9; now she only has one class on her fall schedule at Georgetown. But the most frustrating part for Asmar is not tangible – it’s knowing that she must let go of her dream to live with her family in Jerusalem, at least for now. “I was there in every way you could be there except physically,” she said. “I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me.” A Difficult Choice Hostilities in the Middle East this summer derailed study abroad plans for Asmar and two other Georgetown juniors, both of whom were going to the American University of Beirut, after OIP deemed the region unsafe for student travel. Although the violence has since abated, OIP made an early decision to cancel the trips in order to make other arrangements for the students, executive director Katherine Bellows said. Bellows said that OIP will still allow students to study in countries with travel warnings issued by the Department of State, as it has done since September 2005, and that OIP would allow students to study in Lebanon and Israel in the future, even spring semester, if the situation continues to improve. “It’s a balance of making sure that we continue to explore our world, but not to an unsafe level,” she said. Because there are no university-sponsored programs in Israel or Lebanon, only a few students choose to study there. More choose the Georgetown-supported programs in Cairo and Ifrane, Morocco. Arielle Holland (COL ’07), who studied at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel, last semester, said that the application process “wasn’t difficult per se, but there was the impression that there were a lot of rings to jump through.” Holland said that OIP required her to attend meetings with State Department officials to discuss security issues, such as “what to do if you’re walking down the street and, in front of you, a bus explodes.” Holland said that she quickly developed a mentality of recognizing and avoiding suspicious activity, and that she always felt safe while she was in Israel. Students going to travel-warning areas must also register with the State Department and sign documents stating that they acknowledge the level of risk involved. “You really got the sense that Georgetown took security extremely, extremely seriously,” Holland said. Asmar and Nicole Firlik (COL ’08), who was supposed to study in Beirut, became frustrated that their cases were being handled so delicately. “It involves a certain amount of caution, a certain amount of possible violence,” Firlik said. “They’ve been dealing with terrorism for decades. It’s not new to them.” Unlike most students, who wish to study abroad in the Middle East because they have never been there, Asmar goes to Jerusalem on a yearly basis to visit family. “I know the area. I’ve been there so many times in my life. Jerusalem – it’s the safest place you could be,” she said, citing its distance from the Lebanese border to the north and the Gaza Strip to the southwest. “I personally think that it’s safe, but others disagree.” `There’s No More Beirut Airport’ Over the summer, several Georgetown students traveled on their own to study and work in various locations throughout the Middle East. Nick Greenough (SFS ’09) had scheduled a six-week internship in Lebanon with an online company that organizes and translates news articles into English from a wide variety of Arabic- and Farsi-language media sources. Greenough and his family were scheduled to fly to Beirut, via Amman, Jordan, on July 12. That morning, Israel attacked the Lebanese border after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. As news of the violence broke, Greenough and his family e-mailed friends in Lebanon – including his boss at the internship and a correspondent for ABC News – to find out the extent of the fighting and whether they should still take their flight. “They all said, `Don’t worry about this. It’ll all get resolved really quickly; it always does. The bombing is in the south. They’re not going to bomb Beirut. They won’t do that,'” Greenough said. With that information, Greenough and his family went ahead to the airport. As the plane was en route to Amman, the Israeli Defense Forces bombed Beirut International Airport. “I showed up at the gate in Amman and I asked, `Where do I transfer?'” Greenough said. “They said, `There’s no more Beirut airport.'” Greenough, who ultimately returned home, said he would still like to visit Lebanon. “Beirut was very appealing for me because it’s a more westernized city.” said Greenough (SFS ’09), who plans on studying abroad next year. “I absolutely would still be interested to go study there.” Hope for the Future For Holland, last semester was more than an exciting trip abroad. Israel felt like home. “Especially now that I’ve been there, I think it’s really important to go and interact with the people and experience what they’re going through and what life in Israel means,” she said. “That doesn’t change just because there’s a war.” But beside the warm memories of her experience, there’s a certain anxiety. Now that Israel is in conflict, soldiers in the reserves – including all college-aged students – are being mobilized. “That really makes it personal for me – that every time I open a paper and I’m looking at pictures of Israeli soldiers, I’m hoping that I’m not seeing anyone I know. When I see registries online that are keeping track of the names of those who have been killed, I’m looking at it and hoping that I don’t see names I recognize.” Firlik, who originally planned to spend her first semester in Beirut and the second in Florence, Italy, will now go to Florence for the fall. A double major in Arabic and Italian, Firlik still wants to try to study in the Middle East in the spring, if not in Beirut, then in Cairo. Firlik said that her parents are still supportive of her desire to study in the Middle East. “They have confidence in my common sense and generally being careful of what I’m doing,” she said. The other student who was supposed to go to Beirut this fall, Annabelle Burgett (SFS ’08), intends on going to Rio de Janeiro in the spring, as originally planned. As for Asmar, this is not the first time that she has tried to live in Jerusalem and been disappointed. She wanted to go to high school in Jerusalem, but the Second Intifada began just before school started, in September 2000. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “There’s gotta be a reason why I couldn’t go, so I just gotta figure it out.” While she is at Georgetown, Asmar wants to get more involved with Students for Justice in Palestine. She said that next week she will participate in an SJP vigil service for Lebanese victims. Asmar said that OIP had not offered her any alternate options to study abroad for the fall. She hopes to go to Jerusalem in the spring, but is applying to AUC in case. Meanwhile, she remembers a special slogan on a souvenir sweatshirt she recently bought: “I left my heart in Palestine.”